Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s drama series Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar has put a spotlight on Lahore’s neighbourhood of courtesans, which declined in the 1980s before Iqbal Hussain, a courtesan’s son, sought to humanize the area and helped make it a popular attraction
When the 1971 war with India ended up slicing Pakistan into two parts, military ruler Yahya Khan’s depravity was among the reasons blamed for the dismemberment and Bangladesh’s creation. The humiliating defeat would cut short Yahya Khan’s rule as well. Zia ul-Haq mounted another military coup in the late 1970s and significantly changed how Pakistan was governed thus far.
Zia, who promoted conservatism, was cut from a different cloth. He was unlike the men who had so far helmed the Pakistani army and the state. Zia came from a conservative, religious family from Jalandhar. His father, Akbar Ali, a civilian official at the British Indian Army’s headquarters in Delhi, was known as maulvi (cleric) for his religiosity. Ali, wrote an official biography, ‘drilled Zia in the Islamic way of life.’
Zia joined the British Indian Army after graduating from Delhi’s elite St Stephen’s College, where, the biographer wrote, Zia ‘offered his prayers regularly, observed fasts and mobilized the Moslem youth to serve the cause of faith.’ He swam against the tide in the army, too, and was an exception to the Westernized ways of his fellow Indian officers.
Zia refused to give up his religious and cultural traditions and ‘occasionally offended his British superiors with his lifestyle.’ The Pakistani army officer corps inherited the same lifestyle. They, according to Zia, spent their free time ‘drinking, gambling, dancing and [listening to] music’. Zia, instead, said his prayers and was initially ‘treated with some amusement—sometimes with contempt.’ He never drank; smoking was his sole indulgence.
Zia rose through the ranks resenting the moral degeneration of his predecessors. Zia went on an overdrive to promote conservatism once he acquired power. His rule, among other things, would sound a death knell for Heeramandi, a neighbourhood of ornate havelis of refined courtesans in the northern corner of Lahore’s walled city. Known as a nursery for performing artists with a poetic atmosphere, it was a favourite haunt for lovers of classical music and dance.
Courtesans in colourful saris would perform for them to the tunes of troupes of accomplished musicians in carpeted rooms of illuminated havelis. The higher class among them kept a single customer. It took courtesans years to learn the essence of their trade: the performing arts. They were also trained in poise and elegance, drawing parallels between Heeramandi and Swiss Finishing Schools, where aristocratic European families sent their daughters to perfect their knowledge of etiquette.
Filmmakers would scout for the best acting, singing, and dancing talent at Heeramandi during the movie industry’s infancy, when conservative middle and upper classes stayed away from the ‘dishonourable’ profession. A clampdown in the 1980s during Zia’s rule scared away Heeramandi’s wealthy patrons. Poorer men started replacing them. They showed little interest in the performing arts, which the courtesans spent years training in. The focus shifted from classical music. The courtesans fell on hard times and all but vanished.
The decline of Heeramandi coincided with Iqbal Hussain’s rise as an artist. A courtesan’s son, Hussain, refused to turn his back on the area despite earning global acclaim for his work. By the 1980s, he had become an accomplished artist and refused to leave Heeramandi. He began drawing impressionistic portraits at his family’s haveli to document the lives of courtesans in defiance of the area’s stigmatization.
The haveli once teemed with musicians, and where loud, night-long sessions of dancing and singing would be hosted. Alcohol flowed at the ornate wooden house while Hussain’s mother and aunts entertained their patrons. Hussain continued drawing on his experiences of growing up among courtesans to humanize them and depict the reality of their lives. For Hussain, the courtesans talked when he painted them. He heard their tragic stories.
His intense work brought alive their pain on canvas and earned him recognition globally. It, though, did little to destigmatize the area. Art lovers appreciated his work, but few purchased his paintings. He needed money to support his 20-member family, which included his sister’s four children, whom he had to adopt. Hussain tried his hand at selling chips at the haveli to augment his income. In 1996, he took the risk of upgrading the chip stall to a restaurant, Cooco’s Den.
Hussain struggled for years to find his feet as a restaurateur. Very rarely did customers turn up for the first five years. Then, some foreign customers landed up at the restaurant one fine day in the early noughties. They spread the word about the good food there. A US diplomat’s visit to have a portrait painted turned the tide for Hussain. The diplomat loved his paintings and food and found his story fascinating. His appreciation proved to be a game-changer. It helped Cooco’s Den get noticed and emerge as one of Lahore’s most popular restaurants.
Hussain opened the restaurant to also revive the area’s gastronomic legacy. He wanted to destigmatize it by bringing people back to Heeramandi and restoring its dignity. His blood, sweat, and tears have borne fruit. Lahore’s middle-class families and the gentry now flock to dine at Cooco’s Den, unmindful of Hussain’s works. It has since become a sort of status symbol for Lahoris to eat there and is a must-see place for visitors.
Carved doors lead to Hussain’s haveli, where his paintings are displayed at a gallery on the ground floor. One of them shows two women applying make-up in anticipation of customers as soon as the prayers end at the Badshahi Mosque next door. Hussain’s more controversial works, wrote Washington Post’s Michele Langevine Leiby in November 2012, ‘are propped against the walls with their images hidden.’ Leiby wrote that an enormous iron padlock protects the pieces that almost no one gets to see in a back corner.
Hussain produced a key and showed Leiby ‘a series of eroticized studies of the female figure, including a couple in an embrace and a reclining semi-nude’ in the gallery. Guests have to pass the gallery to take a narrow staircase to Cooco’s Den, spread over two open terraces on the fourth floor.
The restaurant offers a variety of biryanis, spicy fish, beef, and chicken curries, and naan. After dusk, guests can see the beautifully lit Badshahi Mosque in the foreground. Statues of Hindu gods, the Buddha, and the Virgin Mary adorn the restaurant, endowing it with a multi-faith feel. Diners can even surreptitiously enjoy a drink or two in the otherwise dry country.
The place comes alive at night. There was hardly anybody when I landed outside the restaurant on a Sunday morning during a journalistic trip in 2013. Cooco’s Den shuts very late at night and does not open before the afternoon. We could not meet Hussain. There is hardly anything that journalists have not written about him. His life appears to be an open book, which has fascinated foreign journalists the most. Perhaps no scribe has visited Lahore and not written about Hussain over the last two decades. French writer Claudine Le Tourneur d’Ison spent years researching Heeramandi after settling in Lahore in the 1980s. She has written a novel on Hussain’s life.
Hussain comes from a community where a girl’s birth is celebrated, and that of a boy mourned. He was lucky to have a mother who cared for him deeply and wanted to see him educated. He lived up to her expectations by doing well at school. He would not, however, take bullying lying down. He refused to be treated as an outcast.
Hussain picked up fights and wrote graffiti to vent his frustration. His rebellious nature had consequences, and he was thrown out of three schools. He would have spent his life doing odd jobs had not a former classmate suggested he apply to the National College of Art (NCA) when he was out of school and working at a gas station.
Hussain’s sister had by then followed their mother into their ancestral profession. She sponsored his education. Hussain would go on to teach at NCA for 27 years before setting up Cooco’s Den, which in a way became a forerunner to the locality’s makeover. In 2013, Heeramandi’s cramped, rundown alleys were being redeveloped to set up Mughal facades, restaurants, art galleries, and a dance school to tap into the area’s tourism potential.
